howdy,
so i believe that if a cleric's domain spell is not a cleric spell, then s/he can only prepare it in the domain spell slot.
this makes it seem to me that they "kind of" know the spell.
so what happens with wands and scrolls? can cleric's automatically use wands and scrolls of their domain spells that are not cleric spells?
and this is for pfs.

another question.
for the final encounter, how did folks handle letting the PCs find out, or not find out, about the two main ways to save the day? i must admit, i've only read through that section once, so maybe i missed it, but i figured i'd ask because i'm going to be re-reading it now away from computer access and then will be getting home with only a small amount of time before having to run it.

hey, i'm pretty new to gming, and i've got a bunch of questions about this one as i'm looking to prep it. if anyone has any insight, i'd greatly appreciate it. so here goes:

1. on p. 6 it says that pathfinders can suppress an individual effect of the Guards and Wards spell for 24 hours. how does that work mechanically? do they just say, "we decide to suppress the fog?" Do they have to succeed at a spellcraft check to recognize the spell first? Do i have to tell them that they have the ability to suppress one effect? it seems very vague.

2. on p. 8 under the fire mephits description, it says they start north of A1. Does that mean in area A5? or does it mean at the north end of the hall of A2? or something else? The mummies start "near area A5," so I assume that means the north end of A2. In general, i'm having a hard time figuring out where they are all supposed to be once the PCs enter.

3. more on that first fight. I can't tell how involved B and S are supposed to be. Does S just stay in A3 and observe with claivoyance? does B leave A5 and join the fray? if not, how does B know what's going on? I feel a bit at a loss how to set that up so that B and S are there but so they don't automatically become indistinguishable to the PCs and immediately just get attacked and end any chance of dipomacizing and whatnot.

in the description of ghoul touch, it makes it seem that the save is just in relation to the sickened feeling for those in the 10 ft. radius of the paralyzed person and that the person touched becomes paralyzed with no save if the touch attack lands. that seems kind of crazy but definitely how it seems to read in plain english. is there any precedent for the way spell descriptions work that points to the save also being in regards to the touch effect.

hmm, unseen servant is an interesting one. having it bite it from area damage would be annoying, but that might still be the winner for me compared to 10k or more for an item/glove or the weapon cord (maybe i'll have a change of heart, but right now I'm not really digging the visual of my dervish dancing scimitar wielder having a wand flapping around him on a string).
thanks for the thoughts and keep them coming if there are any more.

When it becomes a rule issue, then common sense definitions really don't matter as much as what's mechanically possible. In this case, "physically possible" cannot be just fluff and each GM has to look at their game in regards to both mechanics and game balance.

i'm not convinced the other reading of it turns it into fluff. it turns it into a feat that the animal companion can take if smart enough but cannot use. that doesn't seem like just fluff to me so much as the way the rule reads in conjunction with the mechanics of the game.

hmm. thanks for the thoughts. one of the characters i was thinking about this with is a dervish dancer, so i'm thinking that the dangling wand would interfere with fighting since he can't have anything in his off hand and take advantage of the feat. looks like i might be just dropping it.

Hi, i was wondering if there is any way to store a wand as a free action? i wouldn't need to access it again easily, but after using it to cast something, i'd like to be able to get it out of my hand (without dropping it) and move if possible.

anyone know of anything?

thanks in advance.

oh, and i'm already locked into being a half-orc, so no tail (not that i'm sure if that would work with a tiefling or not)

i can't say i've thought about this overly much, but i've always liked the idea of having crossbows be against touch ac. it has always seemed to me that this would be balanced by the lack of iterative attacks since loading would always be at least a standard action (light) if not a full round. and maybe up the damage a bit on heavy or whatever. i like some of the strength rules for reloading a heavy one or some such as well.

The point being, every unarmed strike a creature makes is inherently considered a natural attack.

Improved unarmed strike allows one to make a lethal or non lethal attack.

In the real world, animals can be trained to do non lethal attacks.

So, by your own logic, animals MUST be able to take improved unarmed strike. They are physically capable (as shown by real world examples), they have the INT, they can buy the feat.

Animals do lethal damage all by themselves already.

They need to be taught a trick to do non lethal damage.

IUS is not that trick. IUS allows someone who normally does non lethal damage to do lethal instead and not take the AoO.

And there is no trick currently written into the game that allows your animal to be commanded to do non lethal. You can push them to do so though.

this is where it seems to me that you are arguing based on the belief that "physically capable" is the same as "mechanically capable." i can see an argument for that, but i don't think it's and open and shut case. it seems to me that using the word "physically" in that statement evokes or connotes more of a connection to the common sense meaning of capable than the game mechanic capable. if that's the case, then an animal can clearly take ius (i'm assuming you wouldn't argue with the common sense idea that animals are capable of unarmed attacks even though you argue that the mechanics of the game change these to being called natural attacks or somesuch) but it would simply be a wasted feat within the game (obviously except for taking it as a prereq).

i'm curious about your thoughts on this as well as on why what i've taken to be your reading of it should be assumed.

from a pfs perspective, has it been stated anywhere that "physically capable of" is the same as "mechanically capable of?"

i haven't read everything on this thread, but i thought it looked to be that the argument against allowing ius is because there's no mechanic to allow the animal to use an unarmed strike, but that seems possibly different from the limitation of "physically capable of." "physically capable of" seems to be more of a common sense threshold. and if that's the case, then it would seem that animals with the requisite int could take ius in order to take other feats but not actually use unarmed strikes, which seems fine to me.

sorry if my lack of reading the entire thread means that this has been covered elsewhere or is totally off point.

well, i think the first thing for me to do is push for a relatively detailed recap before each meeting that we all chip into. without that, i (and the rest of us) just get more and more detached from the back story.
if i try the video diary, i'll come back and say how it goes. knowing me, though, if i decide to do it in-character, i'll need more than 5-10 minutes to plan out how i'd phrase everything, and that's what may keep it from happening. we'll see.

i think that last question from harald was directed at the op and not me.
so, back to the video diaries. do people each do their own and then share them via email in between sessions? are they in character descriptions of what went on or just the basic details of what happened? i'm not really worried about my group as a whole, they all seem pretty content, but i would like a way that might get me to remember more of the backstory stuff and therefore enjoy it more, although the process i use to remember it needs to be enjoyable as well (at least on some level).
i'm kind of liking the idea of an in character one that gets shared. finding the time before i forget it all would be the issue. hmm, maybe thinking about it that way would help me take notes while it's happening though.
really my friends and i just need to all move in together and stop caring about our wives and children so much ;-)

i think the idea of having them involved in the world building sounds intriguing. for me, the problem with APs that only get played once a month at most is that there's so little context to everything that is going on (in the grand scheme of everything else that is happening in my life over the course of 4-6 weeks), that most of the detail and backstory simply washes over me after the first session. once that happens, every session the details become harder to connect and therefore harder to retain and therefore harder to care about. i think having the players involved in creating some of the backstory could help more in terms of simply helping them to remember more of the backstory details (since some of them will be recognizable from their own suggestions) and once things are easier to remember, they might tend to be more interested/interesting. not sure how clear that was.

Harald - what do you mean by a video diary? something like videoing yourself on your phone recapping the session as soon as it ends?

i'd like to hear more as i have some of these issues myself - with myself. i have a game with 6 other rl friends which also plays once every 4 to 6 weeks and we probably only get about 5 hours in per session. only myself and one other friend play pathfinder outside of this group, so we're the ones who take turns organizing and distributing loot and we'e in charge of knowing the rules and whatnot.

personally, i have a super hard time getting myself to care about the backstory with so much time between sessions. i think i'd prefer to get together and play shorter mods or even just pfs scenarios, but my other friend who organizes it with me really enjoys APs. I've tried forcing myself to take notes, but that has yet to work (over the course of a couple of years at this point), by which i mean the notes i do take don't help me much in that regard, and i lose interest in taking notes super fast (is there any special way that people organize their notes to help them flow better and better express the backstory so that they might seem more useful and interesting to me?). the other folks in our group are happy to just to get together when we can and have an excuse to hang out and do something different as far as i can tell, but i'd definitely like to find a way to increase my engagement in the backstory if there are any other suggestions. that brings me back to the video diary - tell me more :-)

to the original poster - i clearly have nothing other than switching to shorter mods and whatnot - which i really don't think is a bad idea. i know i personally enjoy those more on average.

Thanks for the continued info and opinions. I'd obviously need to get maneuver grapple as well, yes? Wasn't sure if you left that off for a reason (other than that you thought it was too obvious to mention).

Also, tell me more about this gravy if you don't mind. Maybe I'm just not imaginative enough (or haven't seen the full list in the animal companion or what not), but beyond the two attacks, and down (which still leaves me with 2 at lvl four - where I'll be starting with this character), I'm having a hard time imagining what would be worth getting excited about.
This had been super helpful by the way.

I'd be playing a druid, and taking grapple feats certainly seems useful. So flutter, you're thinking it's worth it? At lvl 4 I'd have five tricks without the added int, you think 2 more would help significantly? In terms of the druid's feats, I was assuming conjur and augment summoning as the first two

I still can't decide if it's worth it to lose the extra human feat to get my snake up to 3 int. are there feats anyone thinks would be worth getting for the snake later (now that he has a three int) to make it worth it? Or are the extra tricks important enough to be worth it? If the tricks are worth it, any specific thoughts on those?
Thanks for any thoughts

That human trait is intriguing, although it's hard giving up that extra feat. Do you think the extra int is really worth it?
Are the extra tricks and whatnot really worth it? (Also, I'll be heading to your guide right after this).
Ah, ioun stones. For some reason I was saying pearls of power in my head and couldn't figure out how the snake would use them.
The Mage armor idea makes sense to me, but in PFS I can't always rely on an arcane caster being with us, and I doubt I'll have the skills and cha to make umd too good. Probably worth to grab a wand just in case though.
Thanks again.

thanks. i still think an argument can be made that the grab ability is more about the touch than the damage and would therefore fall under the second part of that, but it's good to know where the info is from, and if that's how it is generally played, so be it.

thanks for the feedback. if i stick with this druid, i'll definitely get the book.
regarding the dr issue, is there a reference to that ruling? my reading of the grab ability is that if it hits, then it gets to try to grapple. if it's "normal damage" is 0 because of dr, i don't see that as changing anything the way it's written, but as i said before, i'm not up on all the clarifications out there. has anything been specifically stated about this outside of the "grab" descriptor? i just get a bit neurotic about understanding everything about my character before i start.
thanks again.

thanks. where is this chart? i've been looking into all this druid stuff over the last week, few days and haven't come across that. and i guess i'd need the books for the feats to let them use those slots too :-(

also, there's a grapple command? is that a grapple "trick?" i haven't seen that, and i'd need to buy the book to use it in pfs.

also, also, do you mean that i should teach that in case the ac is too high for him to hit very often? or did you mean what you wrote? in my reading of the grab ability, i thought it seemed that you just had to hit with the attack, not necessarily over come dr to do damage, but i'm not up on all the FAQs and erratas and whatnot.

thanks. any thoughts on if that's a must have for a snake animal companion for a druid? this is for pfs, so it will probably be played mostly between lvl 4 and 10 or so. the one guide stated that getting barding/armor to enchant was a must do, but sometimes those guides are more about later levels. any thoughts?
thanks

so if i have a snake animal companion take the light armor proficiency feat, i can get him mithril shirt type armor for instance? it seems to mess with balance to give this to things like tigers and not, say, a snake, but it also seems weird to give it to the snake. have i missed any faq about this or anything?